Australian stocks are set for a soft start to the week. On the ASX24, the SPI futures contract was 23 points lower to 5099. The Aussie dollar enjoyed a stronger week against the US dollar, closing at $US1.0375, up 1.4 per cent for the week, and it was nearing 100 yen. It was also buying 79.65 euro cents.

A day after ending within 2 points of the all-time closing high of 1,565.15 hit in October 2007, the benchmark S&P 500 ended Friday's session about 5 points away. For the week, the S&P 500 rose 0.6 per cent.

The Dow snapped its 10-day winning streak, when it racked up a series of all-time highs. Equities have rallied since the start of the year on signs of improvement in the economy and supported by the Federal Reserve's efforts to bolster the recovery.

Investors could use the pause to consolidate bets before pushing the market higher again, said Cam Albright, director of asset allocation at Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors in Wilmington, Delaware.

"I don't think that one or two days' movement is really going to change the underlying momentum of this market, which I still think is pretty strong at this point," Albright said.

JPMorgan Chase & Co was the biggest drag on the S&P 500 and one of the biggest weights on the Dow, falling 1.9 per cent to $US50.02.

The Federal Reserve told JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs Group Inc that they must fix flaws in how they determine capital payouts to shareholders, though the central bank still approved their plans for share buybacks and dividends.

A Senate report alleged that JPMorgan had ignored risks, misled investors, fought with regulators and tried to work around rules as it dealt with mushrooming losses in a derivatives portfolio. A former top JPMorgan official told lawmakers on Friday she was not to blame for the losses.

In contrast, Goldman shares recovered from early weakness to gain 0.5 per cent to $US154.84. The stock of rival Bank of America rose 3.8 per cent to $US12.57. The S&P financial sector index edged up 0.3 per cent.

The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 25.03 points, or 0.17 per cent, to 14,514.11 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index shed 2.53 points, or 0.16 per cent, to 1,560.70. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 9.86 points, or 0.30 per cent, to end at 3,249.07.

For the week, the Dow rose 0.8 per cent and the Nasdaq gained just 0.15 per cent.

Volume was robust because of 'quadruple witching' - the quarterly settlement and expiration of four different types of March equity futures and options contracts.

Roughly 8.2 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion.

Supporting the Nasdaq, shares of Apple Inc rose 2.6 per cent to $US443.66.

Data from Thomson Reuters' Lipper service showed investors in US-based funds poured $US11.26 billion of new cash into stock funds in the latest week, the most since late January.

A busy day of economic reports reinforced investors' view that the economic recovery has momentum to it. Manufacturing output bounced back in February, though the pace of manufacturing growth in New York state cooled slightly in March and consumer sentiment fell.

The S&P 500 retail sector index lost 0.8 per cent after the consumer sentiment data from Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan.

Consumer prices registered their biggest increase in nearly four years as the cost of gasoline rose. But a smaller gain in the core US Consumer Price Index, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, left the door open for the Federal Reserve to continue its bond-buying program, which has contributed to the stock market's rally.